Maybe John Gage was right. Maybe the network is the computer.
Gage, chief researcher in the science office for Sun Microsystems, coined the phrase to illustrate the importance of the company he helped found. Sun still uses the tagline today.
Very appropriate, I'd say. So, apparently, would Google
It sounds cool, doesn't it? An entire business suite -- word processing, spreadsheets, customer management software -- all available via your Web browser. Mix in Adobe's
Interestingly, Google's betting heavily on that future. DoubleGoo last week unveiled a preview version of "App Engine," which -- put simply -- frees up a portion of the search king's global infrastructure for the development of Web-based software. Amazon
The rub? The network (ahem) is the computer.
Or, maybe, "is going to be the computer." SaaS, while interesting, isn't yet displacing traditional software vendors. Microsoft
So let's take this for what it is: another step down a long road towards Gage's ultimate vision of network-centric computing. A vision that Google seems determined to realize.
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